Ali Parsa: on Britain's sporting chance

Aside from a few outstanding examples, many of our flagship manufacturing giants have closed or are now foreign operated. As John Neill describes, we lost our competitive edge in manufacturing because we failed to innovate and re-shape at a time when other countries seized the moment. The UK’s future prosperity and global ranking depends on us learning this lesson in other sectors, including the largest sector of global GDP – healthcare.

Since the Second World War, Britain has gradually slipped down the ranks of a widening international trade divide. Last year, we dropped two more places in the UN human development index of living standards, life expectancy and education, coming in just one place ahead of Greece at 28. If we are to win globally again, we need a radical shift.

Reversing this trend will not be easy. I believe we can learn a lesson from Team GB in the Beijing Olympics. In 2008, Great Britain’s Olympic team spectacularly reversed a long term trend in our global sporting achievement by coming fourth in the medals table – because it focused its resources on areas in which Britain had shown competitive advantage. Like Team GB, we need to pick areas of our economy in which we have a sporting chance.

While we may be behind the curve on manufacturing, in many other areas such as professional services, we are already on the podium. Our creative agencies, law firms and financial services are all great generators of wealth for Britain. There is no reason why professional services like healthcare and education should just be cost bases, rather than revenue generators. For me, healthcare is one of the professional services where we have a sporting chance to win.

As developing countries get richer, and the global population expands, healthcare demand is projected to mushroom at a staggering rate. Brazil, Russia, India and China spend less than 3 per cent of their GDP on healthcare; compare this with western European levels of around 10 per cent and levels of over 16 per cent in the US. The value that will be created in the healthcare sector by the rest of the world growing to comparable levels is staggering, yet it takes substantial time and effort for emerging countries to build local expertise.

British healthcare professionals are well respected in the developing world. This may be a legacy of our colonial past but it is a fact that gives us an immense competitive advantage in these emerging markets. While there are currently no clear global healthcare leaders, Britain is well placed to excel as an exporter.

To realise our sporting chance, we need a change of mindset. We should stop looking at healthcare defensively as a cost centre for our country, and instead set our sights on making it a major revenue generator. This means doing what John Neill and his team did in manufacturing, and looking inside ourselves to rejuvenate our industry.

UK healthcare needs to develop new solutions that meet the world’s emerging needs, rather than replicating old propositions that we ourselves can hardly afford. Consider our telecommunications champions – they did not go global by promoting the old fashioned cable but by developing mobile solutions that were adoptable and competitive in their new markets.

Other parts of the world are already finding better value healthcare solutions. A simple cataract operation in the UK costs about £900. In India, companies like Aravind have come up with disruptive innovations that have reduced the cost of a cataract operation to less than £50, with comparable clinical outcomes.

Last year, I spoke at a health convention in Dubai, to an audience of 5,000 healthcare buyers from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. I was among only a handful of western healthcare providers, while there were at least 50 speakers from eastern countries. It seemed the countries situated between Europe and Asia had already decided to turn east rather than west for their healthcare. This reminded me of growing up in Iran in the 1960s and 70s when everyone used to buy western cars. Then almost overnight, there seemed to be a shift to Japanese manufacturers, who produced better quality at lower prices. You could see on the streets of Tehran the beginning of the end of western car manufacturing. Yet some European – particularly German – producers read the warning signs and set out to become competitive again by re-engineering the balance of quality over price.

I am convinced our healthcare professionals can do the same as the German engineers. Our NHS, just like IBM in the US technology sector, could nurse a new generation of British enterprises that become engines of growth. At stake is much more than UK healthcare itself – this is about our healthcare sector playing its part to restore Britain’s prosperity, so we can continue to afford our living standards, including universal healthcare.

Only when our brightest minds are free to create the boldest global solutions will the UK reverse its position in the world prosperity rankings. We have little time to lose and so much to gain. At stake is the prosperity of our nation, and our healthcare sector can play an important role as a contributor rather than consumer of national wealth.